COLONIAL PUBLIC-HEALTH CAMPAIGNS AND LOCAL PERCEPTIONS OF ILLNES:Case Study of the Gogo of Mpwapwa District, Central Tanzania, 1 920- 1 950'

Abstract

This study had two main concerns. The first was to examine the influence of local perceptions of illness on the implementation of colonial public health directives. Secondly, it investigated the impact of colonial public health campaigns on local peoples' understanding of health and illness. To achieve its goals the study addressed Gogo perceptions of illness as an example and colonial public health campaigns in Mpwapwa district. The study integrated written and oral information in reconstructing the history of colonial public health interventions in Mpwapwa district. The study found out that colonial public health campaigns were intended to make local people adopt the western practices of disease control and make them part and parcel of their social habits. Evidently, however, the introduction of colonial public health regulations was not an easy task. Local people tried to interpret the colonial innovations before adopting them. Their interpretation was strongly influenced by their previously held perceptions of illness and life as a whole. As a result, some innovations were accepted and some were neither accepted nor utilized. In the process some long-standing traditional conceptions were transformed while others persisted. Thus, the confrontation between local and western perceptions of illness did not result in the complete demise of local traditional system. Although in the long run the Gogo accepted some of the colonial principles regarding disease control, they maintained some of their local practices till the end. The study concludes that local perceptions of illness, taboos, social values and other social cultural factors played a major role in determining successes or failures in the colonial public health campaigns.